Media Studies Mid-Term

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Big Five/Eight mass mediums

Big Five/Eight mass mediums

Radio, television, newspapers, magazines, film Additionally books, audio recordings, internet

Polymath

Someone with a wide range of knowledge

Mass media as a collection of appliances

Inventions, mediums, technologies

Mass media as a set of laws and policies

Must be regulated (FCC and FRC etc.)

Mass media as a series of economic and business practices

Money is often the answer, necessity of ads

Mass media as a collection of texts

Individual units of meaning/content Texts speak to and about a culture

Mass media as a set of rituals and behaviors

Preferences for certain media, times and situations

Ethnographically Strange

Harold Garfinkel: Studies in Ethnomethodology Looking at your culture from an outsider’s point of view

Medium Theory

Marshall McLuhan, “The medium is the message”

Marshall McLuhan

Wrote Understanding Media and Re-Understanding Media

“The medium is the message”

Medium=technology, the “message” of medium/technology is the change of scale, pace, or pattern it introduces into human affairs

Affordances

Features or capabilities of a technology that help establish how we use it

Harold A. Innis

Wrote Bias of Communications

“The bias of communication”

Book by Harold A. Innis, communication mediums embody a bias towards duration over time or extension in space A stable society achieves a balance of both

Time-biased mediums

Durable, last for generations but reach limited audiences Includes oral communication, parchment, and illuminated manuscripts

Space-biased mediums

Light and portable but fragile, can be transported over long distances, ideal for expanding vast empires

Oral culture

Local, memory is crucial, poetry, myth and history intertwined

Written culture

Meaning and language become more uniform, communication crosses distance and time, memory, history, and myth are recordable

Socrates’ distrust of writing

New medium, believed people would lose their memory

Ideogrammatic writing

One symbol is a word/idea

Syllabic/Phonetic writing

Symbols must be put together to make a word/idea

Print culture

Moveable type in Ancient China, Gutenberg Revolution in 1400s, Protestant Reformation in 1500s Preservation of knowledge and ideologies, reading becomes a necessity, created the idea of illiteracy

Digital culture

Digital computer and binary code

Media convergence

Integration of previously separate forms of media in the digital age

Mass personal communication

Interpersonal interactions become available for public consumption

Technological sublime

Perry Miller, new technologies are met with both horror and awe

Transmission/Linear Model of Communication

One-way, efficiency and clarity, techno-centric

Ritual/Cultural Model of Communication

Meanings circulate around different media texts, communication is a dialogue, historical and contextual, meaning is between the lines and flexible

Culture as a “prison house of language”

Frederick Jameson and Friedrich Nietzsche Saphir-Whorf hypothesis Language structures or thought and perception

Culture as community

Culture binds us together through shared experiences

Culture as a site of struggle

Using culture to make fun of or fight with another culture Often uses humor

Zeitgeist

Literally “time ghost” or “spirit of the times” Involves both possibilities and contraints

Modern Period

19th to mid 20th century Celebrates individual, rationality, order, efficiency, rejection of tradition

Postmodern Period

Celebrating populism, rejecting hierarchy Diversifying and recycling culture Questioning scientific reasoning Acknowledging paradox

Postmodern sentiments

Cynicism, excess (information, consumption, symbols), fragmentation of attention and experience, pastiche (making something in the style of something else)

Jean Baudrillard

Hyperreality and simulacra (copies without an original), one of the three views of postmodernism

Jean-Francois Lyotard

Anti-metannarative: rejection of grand narratives/cliches (American Dream etc.), one of the three views of postmodernism

Russel A. Potter

Signifying (Repetition with a difference, turning consumption into production), one of the three views of postmodernism

Hypodermic Needle Model

Media messages are injected directly into the brains of a passive audience Everyone responds to media in the same way No longer accepted

Minimal Effects Model

Media messages only marginally affect audience Opposite of Hypodermic Needle Model

Uses and Gratifications

Theory that audience uses media to gratify specific wants and needs Active agents that have control over their media consumption

Agenda Setting

News media can influence the importance placed on some topics Can show media’s bias

Cultivation Effect

People who are regularly exposed to media (particularly television) are more likely to perceive reality as they are presented by their consumed media Media affects attitudes and behaviors

Branding

Combination of elements used to identify products or services provided by a company

Brand identity

Specific elements of a brand that distinguish it from others How the owner wants the brand to be perceived

Brand image

Perception an agudicen has of a brand

Utility-based advertising

Early to late 19th century Intrinsic utility of a product or service No attempt to appeal, just stating what a product does

Thorstein Veblen

Conspicuous consumption Theory of the Leisure Class

Conspicuous Consumption

Thorstein Veblen Goods are purchased for social prestige in addition to practical utility

Identity-based advertising

Early 20th century Consumers identify with a particular brand identity

“Consumption ethic”

Utilitarian necessities are transformed into luxury goods Five strategies: color, design, ensemble, modern art, photography Fostered appreciation for differences

Consciousness of obsolescence

Technology will eventually become obsolete, it is an inevitable part of progress

Advertisements as a social tableau

A “slice of life” in which the product plays a key role

Advertisements as a distorting mirror

Ads enhance, distort, reflect, and refract what consumers want to see

Ferdinand de Saussure

Semiotics Early 1900s

Semiotics

Study of “signs” in society Sign is the smallest unit of meaning-anything that can be used to communicate Arbitrary relationship between the sign and referent (names represent something, but is not it) Changing the signifier can change how it is perceived or conceptualized

Persuasive strategies

Famous person testimonial Plain folks pitch Snob appeal approach Bandwagon effect Hidden fear appeal Irritation advertising Association principle Product placement

Erving Goffmann

Gender Advertisements Studied how advertising portrays male and female roles and relationships Makes them ethnographically strange

Dismemberment

Only parts of body shown in advertisment, not whol body

Clowning

Men portrayed as alone, serious, and thoughtful Wome portrayed as laughing and silly

Canting

Women shown in unnatural positions as if maniputlated

Superiority and Domination

Women are dominated by men in ads

First Amendment

Freedom of press

Jeffersonian Ideal

Free press informs the people and criticizes the government, allowing the people to vote

Electrical telegraph

First electrical telecommunications system, point to point messaging Samuel Morse and Albert Vail: Morse Code

Collapsing of time and space

Communication can travel through space significantly quicker than before

Telegraphic realism

Leads to the rise of objectivity in journalism Direct language: efficiency over interpretation

Shift to objectivity in journalism

Writing for general audience

Creation of an information Economy

News becomes a commodity Publishers shift from political part to general audience

Creation of wire services

Associated Press, United Press International, International News Service Collect stories to sell to newspapers Unbiased

Limitations of the telegraph

Required a wire between point A and point B Both sender and receiver needed to know Morse code (inaccessible and had to be very short communciations)

Woodcuts/block printing

Originally in newspapers, up to artist’s interpretations rather than actual events

Daguerreotype

First photography device Could be reproduced but were difficult to work with

Celluloid film and half-tone pringint

Cleaner and easier to reproduce, cheaper, and used in movie industry

Photographic realism

Presence of a photograph indicates truth and objectivity Enhances the credibility of a story

Professional objectivity model of journalism

Objectivity is primary goal Uses inverted pyramid

Inverted pyramid

Articles begin with most important information, then continues on to less important details

New Journalism

The Electric Kool-Aid Test, Tom Wolfe More like fictionally writing, sets scene, imagery, dialogue Manipulation of point of view to put readers inside the mind and emotional reality of characters

Elite magazines

Meant for upper class educated people Long articles, very in-depth

General-interest magazines

Democratization of education For lower class as literacy rates rise Appeals to more people Postal Act of 1879: creates a discount for mailing magazines

Specialized magazines

Intersection of magazines and television Employ niche marketing targeting specific demographics

Complementary copy

Articles written to complement ads Often create problems for the products to solve

Branded content

Articles funded by advertisers and external sources

Regional editions

Magazines tailored to a specific geographic region (like changing the cover of a sports magazine to reflect the football team of the area)